Prefatio §II: The 1703 threefold Pacific Writing, Lutheran approvals, and the Hexads' hostile reception

And the more willingly did I prescribe this quiet acquiescence to myself, because, stirred by this same man, I was meditating other Pacific Writings, from which it would be easy for him and for other theologians of the Lutheran party to judge that the Protestant controversies had hitherto been at least unduly multiplied and exaggerated (not to say anything heavier) by certain doctors of a quarrelsome temper especially, since on the Foundation of the Faith both parties entirely agree — of which I was already then most fully convinced in conscience, and afterward more and more fully confirmed; and my whole reply to be rendered to the most distinguished Scultetus would have aimed solely at proving that very point.

Exactly according to the counsel just set out, there came forth in the year 1703 a twofold Pacific Writing: one of them, exposing Dogmatically the Consensus of Lutherans and Reformed in the Foundations of the Faith; the other, Paradigmatically, through the example of the Consensus of Sandomierz, recommending Protestant Union; and a little later a Third supervened, On the Nature and Character of the Union to Be Kept, with an annexed most gentle Response — as was fitting — to the judgment of a certain most upright Lutheran doctor concerning the first of those three little tracts of mine, a doctor who at last in this very year has publicly professed his most celebrated name.

And although all these Three Writings of mine were also approved by the ballot of other most excellent Lutheran doctors besides the most learned Leipzig reviewers of March 1705 (as the most distinguished Cap. Calvor, known even among foreigners, most recently reports in the latest and most praised Consultation he has written On Entering into Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants, p. 439, himself also voting for the same, both in what immediately precedes and elsewhere, especially pp. 30 and 31 of his Appendix — I pass over in silence for now Johann Fabricius, distinguished alike in theological knowledge and prudence, both in his most clear-sighted Consideration of his Controversies and in his most modest Defense of that Consideration);

yet there have not been wanting others also — especially after those three writings, all pertaining to the Fundamental Consensus of Protestants, had been followed by certain most gentle Hexads of mine, published in Academic fashion and submitted to public inquiry, merely setting out the Protestant Dissensus Beyond-the-Fundamentals — who, though never injured by me with so much as a word, either directly or indirectly through others' sides, were nonetheless so stirred with passion and stung by the gadfly of anger and envy that they rushed upon me and upon all my writings indiscriminately, not once or twice but in almost countless turns and ways, without measure or end, so that they must seem to have abstained from no manner of injury whatever.